“Here, the astronomer’s instrument becomes the means through which we feel wonder – not while we’re looking through the telescope but in the moment after we move our eye from its lens. Then the feeling passes, and only at this moment, at the beginning of the poem’s seventh sentence, does Glück tell us where we are: on a cold hill, taking the telescope apart. The poem’s most basic narrative information is delayed so that we might feel its mere recital as revelation. For the poem’s mission is not to assert the incomprehensible distance of the stars, but to make us feel the incomprehensible distance between ourselves and what appears most near to us. In the scrupulous vocabulary of the poem itself, we are not wrong to feel wonder at the “image” of the night sky, but we are wrong to think of our “relation” to the stars as being more inexplicable than our relation to any other thing, no matter how close, no matter how familiar.”

Also, a final reminder that Louise Glück will be the topic for our next session on Thursday, February 25. Please see the SCHEDULE PAGE for a list of Glück’s poems to be discussed.